COVID-19 Situation Update

There are 3 new positive cases to report as of 6 pm today.

The first 2 cases are from Nadawa, and 7 miles Nasinu, and are primary contacts of case 211 from Tacirua. The 3rd case is from Samabula and is also a primary contact of an earlier case.

We can now confirm that there was one positive test result in the first batch of 7000 samples sent to Australia- this was initially reported as inconclusive during the afternoon update today, while the rest of the test results were negative. However, we can also confirm that this positive sample, from Natabua Health Centre in Lautoka, is from an already known COVID-19 case that was identified as a contact of another case and had tested positive for later samples already tested in Fiji. She was isolated, treated and then released after recovering. No further action is needed for this case, and our total case number remains the same.

One patient has recovered, which means there are now 99 active cases in isolation. Fiji has had 238 cases in total, with 135 recoveries and 4 deaths, since our first case was reported on March 19th, 2020.

A total of 90,325 COVID-19 laboratory tests have been conducted since we started testing in early 2020.

A total of 1933 samples were tested yesterday. The Nadi Hospital laboratory started testing for COVID-19 on 21st May using their 4 new GeneXpert machines, and their testing numbers are being added to the daily test counts. The daily average of testing over the last 7 days is 2500 tests per day. The 7-day average daily test positivity is at 0.4%, and also 0.4% on the last day. An average of 2.8 tests per 1000 population was conducted daily over the last 7 days, with 2.2 tests per 1000 population in the last day.

-ENDS-